Make source of funds received during elections ‘public’: Mayawati to BJP

NEW DELHI: BSP chief Mayawati on Friday attacked the BJP asking it to make public the source of funds received by it during elections and alleged that it cannot tolerate when people of deprived sections progress in business.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister’s remarks came a day after the Income Tax Department attached a ‘benami’ commercial plot worth Rs 400 crore in Noida belonging to her brother and his wife. She asked the BJP to make public the source of Rs 2,000 crore it allegedly collected during elections.

“Everybody knows that during elections BJP got Rs 2000 crore in its back accounts. It is not clear who gave it the money and everyone wants to know its source. Is it benami,” she asked.

She alleged that votes of the poor and deprived were bought in the polls through these funds, Mayawati said.

The BJP cannot tolerate when people of the deprived sections progress, especially in business, and use power and government machinery against them, she claimed. Their attempt to crush the voice of the deprived people would not succeed, Mayawati said, adding that her supporters should not think that when she was not spared, what would happen to them.

She said that before pointing a finger at others, the party should introspect.

“If they think they are Harishchand (honest) they should hold a probe about the wealth of their people before and after coming into politics,” she said.

The provisional order for the attachment of the seven-acre plot, beneficially owned by Anand Kumar and his wife Vichiter Lata, was issued on July 16 by the department’s Delhi-based Benami Prohibition Unit (BPU).

Mayawati recently appointed her brother Kumar as national vice president of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Benami properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.

The plot, where a five-star hotel and other luxury facilities were planned to be created, is registered at no 2A, Sector 94, Noida, in Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar district, part of the National Capital Region.